


will the scars go away with night? (try to smile for the morning light)

by cagetraumasam



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bonding, Cage Trauma, Friendship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Torture, Introspection, Love, Phone Calls, Psychological Trauma, Season/Series 14, Shared Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-27
Updated: 2018-11-27
Packaged: 2019-09-01 11:42:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16764439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cagetraumasam/pseuds/cagetraumasam
Summary: Sam Winchester is an enigma. There’s a lot that Rowena doesn’t know about him, that she may never entirely understand, butthis… this, she knows too well.





	will the scars go away with night? (try to smile for the morning light)

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, friends!
> 
> A few things before you get onto the actual fic:
> 
> 1\. Originally, the main point of this was to to recreate a scene from Buffy: the Vampire Slayer because it's the kind of scene I wish Sam could get in order to get some semblance of closure for the trauma he suffered at Lucifer's hands. That being said, while that scene is still in here, there's a lot of build-up to it, because I realized I wanted to write it from Rowena's perspective, and I sort of got carried away in writing some introspection on what she thinks of Sam and her relationship with him. So... this is kind of a whole mess of ideas lol. But I hope you like it anyways, and if you don't, that's super chill. (I cannot for the life of me figure out how to link to the scene from Buffy I'm talking about, but it's from the end of episode one of season two, where Buffy smashes the Master's Bones. The contexts for the scenes are very different, but I feel like it worked okay as an idea.)
> 
> 2\. The title comes from the lyrics of the song "A Little's Enough" by Angels and Airwaves. If you have time, give it a listen! I find the melody very soothing.
> 
> 3\. Rowena says things and has ideas that I don't necessarily agree with, but that I feel are an integral part of her character and needed to be written in. On a different note, I may have made her a tad too introspective because SURPRISE some of her ideas about Sam are actually some of my ideas about Sam. Still, though, I feel like she's emotionally intelligent enough to be about as introspective as she is in this.
> 
> 4\. Though I don't think it's terribly explicit, there are discussions of torture at Lucifer's hands, which is why I tagged with the torture and abuse tags. Please tread carefully; if you need to not read, I totally understand.
> 
> 5\. I had a little trouble writing the ending for some reason, but I think I've got it to a place where I like it. Still, I feel like it's maybe a little clunky or abrupt, so my apologies if that's the case.
> 
> 6\. At one point, the Cage gets mentioned and I delve into my headcanon about it a little bit. Basically, in my headcanon, the Cage that we see in season 11 is just the closest translation of what the Cage would like in a place where humans can perceive it, and the actual cage is a lot more eldritch and surreal, for lack of a better term.
> 
> 6\. This probably doesn't go with the s14 timeline at all, and it's definitely not going to actually happen, but the Supernatural timeline is fucked anyways, and I wanted to write it so. Here it is!
> 
> That's all I can think of! I hope you enjoy! <3

There are a lot of things about Sam that Rowena can’t claim to understand. It took her off-guard, for a while, that distance he always seems to keep; the way that he holds himself in. He’ll lay himself bare and open old, neglected wounds for the sake of others, _naturally_ , but when it comes down to it, he’s not in the business of allowing himself to _be_ , unguarded and unfiltered, around—well, around anyone, it seems. It’s strange, but in a way, she thinks she knows the feeling; allowing someone to really _see_ her has always made her uneasy. It gives them power she doesn’t know that she wants anyone to possess. It puts her in a position of vulnerability, and that’s the last place that she wants to be.

She can imagine Sam feels much the same way.

But for all the ways Rowena can see that they’re alike, she can see a thousand more in which they are not. For one, she puts on a show to do her hiding, all flirtation and sequins and bravado; he seems to just let himself fade into whatever everyone else needs him to be, whether it’s a brother, a hunter, a son, a friend. She isn’t sure who he really is at his most base state. She’s not sure he knows, either.

For another thing, though, Rowena doesn’t do ‘love,’ in the strictest sense. Not the way that other people do. Loving people—and letting them love you in turn—gives them a hold over you. It’s a weakness to be exploited, and Rowena’s been weak too many times to ever want to suffer through it again. She didn’t let herself love her son, not in the ways that really counted, and now he’s dead and she doesn’t know how to feel. _What_ to feel. (She tries not to think about the fact that she was willing to sacrifice her sanity and her newfound principles to bring him back, and if that isn’t love, then she’s not entirely clear on what is.)

Sam, though. Sam loves like it’s all he knows how to do. He loves his brother more than anything; more than his own life. It’s all-consuming. He loves his mother in a more tender way, in a way that’s hesitant but still so very intimate. He loves the angel, too, and the Nephilim child. He loves them like they’re family, like their differences don’t matter. He loves them like it’s easy. It’s a choice he makes, his love. Rowena knows there’s more, too; Sam gives and gives and gives his love, and it pulls him in all sorts of different directions. (She’s not thinking about where she fits in all this. She’s not.) Sometimes, when it’s late and she’s letting her mind wander and her inhibitions lower through the use of her favorite brand of bourbon, she thinks that maybe he loves so much so that he’ll be pulled apart, so that there will be nothing of him left. That maybe he loves in the hope that if he _becomes_ his love for those he cares about, everything else will be washed away, and it won’t matter that he doesn’t let the world know him, because there’s nothing to know but that. She can’t be certain, but sometimes she thinks she sees something like a sort of deeply-ingrained shame in his eyes, as though there’s something bad or dangerous or unholy inherent within him. She thinks maybe that has something to do with it.

(She thinks maybe she spends too much time trying to understand him, lately.)

Other times, though, she can’t help but think that the love he has, feels, _is_ , is too pure to be considered weakness. Maybe it’s just her that doesn’t know how to love without letting it destroy her. Or maybe Sam is special. Maybe his love isn’t the kind that destroys, or if it is, maybe that’s not as bad a thing as Rowena thinks it is.

She’s not under any sort of illusion that their relationship isn’t a strange one. She knows how it must seem; a centuries-old witch and the hunter destined to kill her, friends? It’s almost laughable. The plot of a bad sitcom. She’s not sure how to name what she feels about him. If it’s love, it isn’t love like the kind she was meant to have for her son, nor is it romantic in nature… though she does have to admit that a rendezvous has crossed her mind once or twice, because _hello_. But no, if she loves him, it’s born of tragic commonality, of a shared trauma, of utter helplessness. She’s not even sure that love is quite the right word, but she’s yet to find a better one. Sometimes, though, she can see whatever she’s feeling reflected on his face, and knows that he knows. (“We owe you one,” he’d said, but his eyes were all _we’re free_.) For better or worse, they’re connected in a way that’s not fair and maybe not right but that will never really end. Whatever is between them, they’ll always have it. (Unless, of course, he finally puts that bullet through her heart. Or maybe even then. Rowena doesn’t know.)

It’s because of that connection that Rowena can’t quite believe what she’s hearing. It takes her a moment to process, but even when she does, she still can’t quite make sense of it.

"Come again, Samuel?”

She hears him sigh and imagines that he does that thing he sometimes does where he runs his hand through his hair, unconscious of the act. Honestly, _Winchesters_. “I told you.”

He sounds tired, she notes, even through the phone, even in her haze of _no, no, no_. “Sam—”

“I’m handling it, alright? You shouldn’t… you don’t need to worry.”

"His _vessel_ , Sam, Lucifer’s vessel, how could you, after what he—Lucifer _tortured_ you, Sam, you and me, he—”

“I know,” he says stiffly. “I remember.”

She doesn’t quite know what to say to that. It’s not that she’s never heard him aggravated at her; when they first met, they couldn’t even be in the same room together without making quips that thinly veiled their disdain for one another. But that was before. And this is different.

“Look,” he sighs again. “We’re keeping him in the Bunker, for now. He doesn’t seem too keen to leave, anyway.”

“Samuel, are you absolutely positive that he can be trusted? That this isn’t another one of Lucifer’s sick games?”

“He’s dead, Rowena. I saw it with my own eyes.”

“We’ve both been dead before too, you’ll recall. You, fairly recently, I might add. It doesn’t always stick the way you might like it to.”

“It’s not Nick’s fault, Rowena, okay?”

“Really? Because I seem to recall a certain rule mandating that an angel must receive the _consent_ of the vessel before entering.”

“That’s not… there are loopholes to that rule. To every rule.” And there he goes again, with his half-confessions and his rawness and his reservation. She’s beginning to realize that though in some fundamental way they are very similar, they may never really _k_ _now_ each other all that well. They’re both too closed off.

And perhaps a wee-bit too stubborn. “And pray tell, what exactly could give someone the idea that saying yes to the serpent of Eden was a wise decision?” It comes out of her mouth before she really has time to think it through.

There’s a beat. “I did, once.”

She knows, she’s heard the whispers and the gossip, and knew he had to have gotten into that damned Cage somehow (the first time, the time it wasn’t her fault), but she’s never heard him talk about it. Not really. Not the how of it all. The night she stopped killing reapers, the night she’d realized she had to let go of her son, they’d both drank themselves halfway to honesty. Dean (and in her mind, even through her anger, she makes a note to keep her eyes open for him, or rather, for his body) had tucked in earlier than each of them, but they’d stayed sprawled on the floor and drank silently until suddenly they weren’t silent. It was little stories at first, fond memories and trivialities, but the more they drank, the darker the conversation turned. Shivering, she’d recounted feeling herself turn to ash, the acrid scent of her own burning flesh. She’d talked and talked because if she didn’t, she would have cried, and she had no interest in crying in front of a Winchester.

Sam took longer to talk, and even when he did, it wasn’t the torture he described, or the helplessness. No, it was the structure of the Cage. How terrifying it was. Rowena hadn’t understood, really, because the Cage that she’d seen didn’t look like much of anything—but then he threw out words like “closest translation” and “quantifiable” and “human perception.” The way Sam tells it, the real Cage is an endless expanse of black emptiness where time means nothing because you’ve always been there and you always will be. Lucifer could bend it however he wanted, but humans were never meant to endure such utter, eldritch unreality. He’d talked about it with a sort of dead remembrance, and eventually he’d trailed off with a faraway look in his eyes and then they were back to being silent. She’d thought it strange that of all the horrors Sam must have endured there, his focus was on that. But maybe it was easier to think about the mindless mechanism and the pain it caused him than the active and gleeful way Lucifer took him apart.

Maybe that’s why Rowena is so _angry_ , not at him, not entirely, but at the whole situation. Because Sam is acting as though this is completely fine, as though it doesn’t bother him, and she knows that it isn’t true. She wishes that just for once, he would be selfish. That he would put his needs in front of the needs of others. She doesn’t know why she cares, but she does. For his sake and for hers.

But he won’t. That’s not in him. If it ever was, it’s gone now.

“It’s not his fault, Rowena,” he says again, slowly, carefully. She can’t help but wonder if he’s trying to convince her, or himself.“We don’t know why he said yes, but we do know that Lucifer is a master of manipulation, right? So, I don’t know. Maybe he was desperate or scared, but whatever happened, it’s over now, and he needs help.”

Distantly, she’s aware that Sam is being very human and good. But if this is what goodness is, she’s no longer sure that she wants to partake.

“And it has to be _your_ help?”

“Who else?”

She wants to _scream._ She looks at the clock on her hotel room wall and decides it’s late enough that he can’t blame her for wanting out of the conversation.

“I have to go, I’m afraid, Samuel.”

“Rowena—”

“I’ll be sure to keep an eye out for your brother,” she assures him, before clicking to end the call. She looks to where her bed is, and thinks of Charlie, the Charlie from the other world, asleep in the room next to hers, and realizes she needs this little road trip of theirs to come to an end. She’s gone soft, of late. Let herself get attached to too many things, too many people.

It hurts her to care this much.

She doesn’t say ‘I told you so.’ It’s tempting, when he calls with news of the vessel (Nick, Sam calls him) and his departure. She’s on the verge of it when she hears Sam’s ragged breath and something in that halts her.

“I can be there in a day,” she says instead, and he laughs and it’s not quite broken but it is a little manic.

“No, don’t, you don’t need—it’s um. Right now, we’re just keeping an eye out. No point spending every waking moment tracking him down if he’s not hurting anyone.” The _if_ hangs in the air.

She quirks an eyebrow before remembering that he can’t see her. “So, what? You’re all just going to let him roam the world unsupervised?”

“He said he needed time, or something. Look, it’s not my favorite thing in the world, but we’ve sort of got bigger problems right now.”

“Like figuring out why Michael gave up _his_ vessel.”

“Yeah. Like that.” A pause, and then: “I’m worried. About Dean.”

Rowena rolls her eyes. “Are you ever not?”

“This is serious, Rowena. What he went through—”

“Was difficult, I’m very sure, but you’ve gone through similar things and come out of it alright, have you not?”

It’s the wrong thing to say. Sam goes silent on the other end, and Rowena can’t tell if it’s because she’s hit a sore point, or something else, something more sinister. She bites her lip and sighs after a moment.

“Are you alright, Samuel?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” His voice is stiffer than before, and more guarded. “I should get going, it’s almost time for the hunters to check in.”

Maybe one day, they’ll be able to express anger and disappointment with each other, instead of just avoiding it. Today’s not the day, though. She thinks that maybe they don’t know how to, anymore. Not with each other.

“Send my best to Dean, then,” she says, and then the call is over and she’s not sure who ended it, but she’s worried. She could practically hear him stretching himself thin, and she wonders how much of it is necessary and how much of it is so that he doesn’t have to think about the things that really scare him. Maybe that’s what she should have asked.

Because she _knows_ . She knows that Sam’s still scared, that he might never stop being scared. Lucifer may be dead, but he’s never really _gone_. His legacy lives on through his vessel, through the lives he ruined. Sam’s lying to himself, he’s telling himself that Nick isn’t Lucifer as though that means there’s no reason not to trust him, but she can tell that even he doesn’t quite believe it. He’s just… he’s straining under the weight of everything that’s happening and Rowena _knows._

One of these days, it’s going to hit him that Lucifer will always have power over him, even in death, power not born of love but born of the way he so intimately and completely destroyed his life. One of these days, Sam Winchester is going to break.

And as selfish as it is, she can’t bear the thought of being around when that happens.

Once Sam calls to ask for help with a tracking spell, Rowena has a choice to make. Or maybe it was never really a choice. Her head aches to think of it, so she doesn’t, not really. Sam says he needs her and he sounds so very tired and the next thing she knows, she’s in Lebanon, Kansas. Again.

(In the back of her mind, she knows that this is the kind of power that could turn dangerous. He calls and says please and utters a few sad words and she comes, just like that. She can’t find it in her to care much anymore. It doesn’t scare her; that’s the strange thing.)

“I’m sorry,” Sam is saying for what seems like the thousandth time. “You were right. We should’ve found him right away. I just… I didn’t think he’d do this.”

 _This_ being the pattern that they’ve mapped out, Nick’s road trip across the country, bloodier by the day. Looking for answers, from what they can gather.

“It’s not your fault,” she says and she doesn’t know whether she believes it but she knows he needs to hear it and it’s not as though she hasn’t made mistakes far worse and more intentional than this, anyway. There’s no point in placing blame now. “We’ll find him.”

And they do. It takes a few weeks—tracking spells can only do so much when someone’s good at running, and Nick must’ve learned a thing or two all that time Lucifer was rattling around in his head—but he slips up, doesn’t manage to slip away mere hours after they pin down his general location this time, and that’s how they know something must be really wrong.

Sam offers to let Rowena leave, but she refuses. This is it. She can feel it. And as awful as it is, as much as she doesn’t want to have to endure her friend’s suffering, she knows she needs to be there. He needs her. ( _Friend,_ she thinks and that’s it, that's the word. _Friend._ )

The tracking spell gives them a general location, so they know they’re in the right town, but Winchesters and Co. have to do a bit of detective work before they find the abandoned warehouse they seem certain that he’s in. Rowena plays at being less than impressed, but she’s also the first to step foot inside. (“You don’t have to come in, if you’re that worried,” Sam says. She rolls her eyes.)

It’s dark and dank and there’s lots of broken glass and the vessel—Nick, she reminds herself—is lying dead on a raised altar. Or what’s left of him, rather; he’s a skeleton at this point. He looks like he’s been dead for years, even though it's barely been over a month since he left.

Everyone (everyone but Sam) looks to her, and she realizes that it’s because they can’t be sure that it’s him, that they have to be sure. She doesn’t need a spell, she can _feel_ it, and she knows Sam can, too, but she also knows that the rest of them can’t, so she says the incantation and then she knows without a doubt.

“He must have upset a powerful witch,” she notes. “For a curse like that.”

A collective sigh of reassurance washes over the room. She’s not sure what they were expecting, she’s not even sure what _she_ had been expecting, but to know that he’s dead is certainly cause for relief. It’s unfortunate, of course, but he can’t hurt anyone now, and they can all get on with their lives.

Well. Maybe.

“It’s over,” the Nephilim boy, Jack, smiles.

Sam isn’t standing near the rest of the group. He’s walked away, and is arms are hanging limply at his sides. His face is overcome with something that Rowena can’t quite define, and a little light from the broken windows is casting over only half of his face, but he’s staring at the remnants. At the bones.

“No,” she says softly. “It’s not.”

There are lots of strange things strewn about the floor of the warehouse. Planks of wood and broken glass and big tools. The room is very quiet, and very still, as Sam picks something up. In the dim light of the warehouse, it looks vaguely like a sledgehammer. He walks silently, carefully, as though in a trance, and he draws nearer and nearer, and after a moment, he brings it down and the noise that the bones make as they splinter is hollow. He brings it down, again and again, and there are strange sounds, half-sobs, coming from his mouth. He brings it down again as though maybe this time, there will be answers or absolution in the crack of the bones and the altar, and she wants to tell him that it’s fruitless but she knows that he needs it and so she stays very still and very silent as he shatters the only remaining pieces of the being that will always have a hold on him. It’s the only closure he’ll ever get, and it still won’t be enough.

Sam Winchester is an enigma. There’s a lot that Rowena doesn’t know about him, that she may never entirely understand, but _this_ … this, she knows too well.

Eventually, after many long moments, he falls and the sobs overtake him and wrack his body. He doesn’t seem to notice the shards of glass beneath him, poking holes in his jeans and staining them with dots of red. Rowena spares a glance towards the others; to his mother, all soft blonde curls and heartbreak as she shifts on her feet, deciding whether she should go to him; to his brother, with his stony, grim expression and the fists that clench uselessly at his sides; to the angel who looks sad but not surprised; and to the boy, who looks so, so confused, and is perhaps the most human of them all. He steps forward but stops himself, considering, and then he looks at her.

And she knows. This is why she’s here. This is why she came.

She goes to him and kneels down at his level and is saying things, all sorts of things, whispering that it’s okay, that it will be okay. She’s embracing him but it’s less of a hug and more of an assurance, more of something for him to hold onto.

She is not his mother. She is not his brother. She’s not family, not even in the way that he defines it. She’s something else entirely, and somehow, she thinks that that’s exactly what he needs.

It’s a long time before his sobbing ceases, and even then the tears still pour. They’re both kneeling, on their knees, just the way that Lucifer would have wanted it, and gods, but isn’t that something? She can’t have that.

“Up,” she says in soft command, lifting herself and extending her hand for him. He stares at it a moment, as though he’s not sure he can. He looks tired, like maybe he would like to be able to give up now. He looks like a child. He looks older than time itself. “Up,” she says again, with conviction, and he takes her hand. And he stands, and he’s still crying but she’s never really noticed all the colors in his eyes before, so she takes the time to notice now.

Without thinking, she brushes a stray strand of his hair behind his ear as they stare at each other, and they both know that it means the thing that she can’t say. But he doesn’t need her to say it. He just needs this. She knows the others are staring. She doesn’t care. Or she does.

Maybe that’s the point.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed! Come shout at me @cagetraumasam on tumblr! <3


End file.
